Sunflowers and Autumn Fruit Still Life

I am one of relatively few amateur photographers who do classic still life photography. I am not sure how or why I developed the passion for still life. It may be the extra dimension of creativity it offers a photographer in that he/she creates the image from scratch rather than merely takes a shot of a "found" scene. Or it may simply be a fine sensitivity to the aesthetics of a harmonious interaction of objects put together. Whatever it is, I regularly feel an urge to create still life images and I do not think that will change for as long as I take photos.

The change of season we are just going through - the end of summer and beginning of autumn - automatically saw me looking for inspiration and subsequently conjuring up a still life composition in my mind. There were so many colourful fruits of nature to choose from. I pictured the cheerful, rustic sunflowers in the old earthenware jug as the main focus of my image. A few stems of the orange red crocosmia flowering in the car park outside my house served to give some volume to the bunch of sunflowers, and the supermarket bought autumn fruits added more colour and enhanced the season's theme.

I always shoot from different angles and camera heights and normally find the 90 degree (straight on) angle with eye level viewpont most pleasing. On this occasion, however, I felt the slightly higher viewpoint with the camera to the left of the set up worked better. I thought it made the positioning of the elements look more natural and casual.

As with all my still life images, I used texture layers extensively in post processing. I like how textures change the lighting, bring out colour tones and give a painterly effect to the image. Whilst I have been toning down the use of textures on many of my scenery images I continue to use them freely in my still life work.